"Boston is Boston. I'd go back tomorrow," said David Jones, 69, of St. Paul, who was stopped Monday, April 15, from finishing his 12th Boston Marathon by the bombing. He said a Boston resident offered to text his wife to tell him he was OK. "That kind of kindness was rampant."

-- Runner Charlene Barron, 63, of Wayzata said she and a friend went into a bar to find shelter when the race ended, and a patron in the bar took the two women to her apartment and gave them dry clothes to wear.

-- Larry Gray, 63, of Roseville was running in his first Boston Marathon, and only the second marathon he's ever done. The bombs stopped him just short of the finish line, said the University of Minnesota math professor. "The woman next to me, she just burst into tears, saying, 'I've got to finish, I've got to finish, I've got to finish,' " Gray said. "You're working for this moment of triumph and it was cut short."

Gray said in the chaos after the race, it took four hours before he was able to get something to eat after running more than 25 miles. But when he took shelter in a post office, a postal worker gave him a coat and told him to keep it.

-- A growing mass of confused runners stood shivering in the street near the finish line when the race was halted, remembers Jim Cloutier, a 48-year-old runner from St. Michael. He said nearby residents starting passing out coats and garbage bags for the thinly clad runners to wear in the cold.

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Meanwhile, relatives in the crowd tried to find their loved ones by shouting at the runners, "Is Tom there? Is Frank there? Is Melissa there?"

"It was a spooky scene," Cloutier said.

He said he went to a bar and ate a hamburger while watching news reports of the explosion that happened a few blocks away.